Patients

At the ding of a cowbell Sunday, staffers in a command center at the Johns Hopkins Hospital began clapping and yelling out victory cheers. Another department had begun to transfer patients as part of a massive move from Hopkins' aging hospital building to a towering $1.1 billion facility next door. The complicated process, which centered on the delicate task of relocating sick patients, was running according to plan. The official opening Tuesday of the two 12-story towers will mark the final step in the largest hospital project in Maryland history.

Four Maryland hospitals will be contacting patients who might have come in contact with a health care worker infected with hepatitis C when he worked in the state between 2008 and 2010, according to the state health department. David Matthew Kwiatkowski, 32, who worked as a health technician, was arrested Thursday in New Hampshire, according to a statement on the FBI website. He was charged with illegally obtaining Fentanyl, a powerful anesthetic, and with infecting at least 30 people with hepatitis C at Exeter Hospital in New Hampshire, the FBI said.

I read with interest Maryland Medical Society CEO Gene Ransom's commentary on barriers to care created by health insurance companies ("Insurers' 'fail first' policies jeopardize patient health," March 12). As the president and founder of a national patient organization for people who have primary immunodeficiency diseases - lifelong conditions caused by genetic deficiencies of the immune system - I know that our patients are all too familiar with "fail first" policies. Many of these patients do not produce antibodies needed to fight illness.

  Employees of the Westminster branch of Morgan Stanley donated 15 handmade fleece blankets to Carroll Hospital Center last month as a gesture designed to brighten the spirits of children in the hospital's care over the holidays. The blankets were made by staff members of two departments at Morgan Stanley - the Velnoskey Group and the DeRenzis Ford Group. Douglas Velnoskey, a senior vice president at Morgan Stanley in Westminster, and Coleen Kramer Beal, registered associate of the Velnoskey Group division at the company, made the presentation.

Kathryn Klein, M.D., M.P.H. and an assistant professor of ophthalmology at the Krieger Children's Eye Center at the Wilmer Institute, is seeing patients at the Wilmer Eye Institute at Bel Air (formerly Parris-Castoro Eye Care Center). She has subspecialty training in pediatric ophthalmology and adult strabismus. Klein received her bachelor's degree from Amherst College. She completed medical school at Mt. Sinai School of Medicine and received a master's degree in public health from Columbia University.

Hot water began leaking from a pipe on the fifth floor of Mercy Medical Center in downtown Baltimore Saturday afternoon, causing a very brief evacuation of some medical staff, but had no effect on patients, according to officials. The Baltimore Fire Department received a call for a "pipe burst" on the fifth floor of the Mary Catherine Bunting Center in the 300 block of St. Paul Street about 2:30 p.m. Staff were evacuated for about 15 minutes while fire officials worked to shut off the water valve.

NEW YORK -- For years, doctors have been vexed when it comes to treating people with the worst form of lupus, but new research suggests that temporarily obliterating the immune system, then rescuing patients with their own stem cells, can put them into long-term remission. Lupus has no cure and is an autoimmune disease, an insidious condition in which turncoat components of the immune system attack the body, zeroing in on vital organs. The disease was once invariably fatal, but since the latter part of the 20th century doctors have reduced deaths through aggressive treatments based on tamping down the immune system - therapies that have worked in all but the worst cases.

Stan Williams was hospitalized in 2000 at Harford Memorial Hospital with Legionnaires' disease -- a bacterial pneumonia caused by an infection from a contaminated air conditioner, cooling towers or stagnant water supplies -- and spent 20 days in a coma. His family was told repeatedly that he wasn't going to wake up. When he did, the hospital staff thought it was a miracle. He attributes his recovery to the care he received at the hospital. Although he recovered from the coma, the illness left him unable to feel his feet at times, rendering him permanently disabled and unable to return to work as a firefighter.

Six years ago, the Baltimore Washington Medical Center opened a new emergency room with the ability to treat 60,000 patients a year. But within a short time, the capacity of the new facility at the hospital - then called North Arundel - was exhausted. Last year, the ER was treating about 219 patients a day, well above its capacity of 165. As numbers grew, so did waits, which ranged from one to four hours, according to the hospital. Lately, the hospital has seen drastic improvement after implementing a new system for receiving and treating emergency patients, officials say. With help from a consulting firm, the center has an average wait of less than an hour, ambulance diversions are down to 22 hours a month and about 1 percent of patients leave without being seen.